Siblings Three
by bunyipbabe
Summary: Thanos's family is not the most conventional. A dark look at Korath, Gamora and Nebula's early life. Contains child abuse and mild gore, but no pseudo-incest.


**Please read and review. I'm taking the concept from the cartoon, with regards to Korath being Nebula and Gamora's brother.**

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At first, there were three. Their names were Igrail, Anagi, and Korath. Then Anagi died (screaming, pleading, broken by a twist of her father's hand), and after that there were two. Then Gamora arrived, and there were three again.

Korath liked Gamora at first.

It was wrong – he knew he shouldn't. Siblings weren't supposed to _like_ each other. He'd learnt that the hard way: after all, Thanos had accused Anagi of loving her older brother Igrail more than she loved him, and that was why he'd smashed her little bones to powder when the Other caught her drawing pictures of the two of them playing, in the mould that clung to the rocks around the dark side of their father's throne. Korath, five years their younger, had been too small and too far behind in his training to merit much attention from his older siblings. They ignored him, when they weren't pummeling him under their father's watchful gaze. He had had the best of both worlds: been educated by the power of their cybernetically enhanced fists, but had been spared the deadly touch of their affection.

But with Anagi dead and Igrail cowed to terrified silence, aware that one misstep could be his death, it was Korath's duty to step up and become a son worthy of the Mad Titan. He trained harder than ever. He bore his upgrades in stoic silence, glaring fierce holes through the rocks that hung suspended in the aether above. And when Gamora arrived, a fortnight before Igrail broke one of the gravitational atmosphere generators and fed himself to the vacuum, Korath had taken it upon himself to induct her into life on Titan Crag.

Igrail had been a mess, by the end. Shivering and crazy-eyed, flinching at every sound. He'd been useless. So Korath had dispassionately smacked the snivelling, wet-eyed creature until she stopped crying, stripped off the singed and tattered garb of her extinct people, and dressed her in Anagi's old leathers so that she might be presented to their father. It was as he fed her thin green arms through the sleeves – custom-made for his dead sister, but baggy and hanging off his new one; he'd have to see about getting a new order in – that Korath realized he was feeling something for the first time. It was not disgust at her tears, or (heaven forbid) pity. It was a small and curious flare of protectiveness. When he carried her before Thanos, sullenly resisting but lethargic with grief and easy to conquer, he set her on her feet and taught her to kowtow before retreating into the shadows and leaving them to their audience alone.

"Thank you, my son," Thanos boomed. But his eyes were on Gamora, and rather than pleasure at the praise, Korath only felt fear for her.

To stay would be too obvious. He cast a parting glance at the small green head, bowed under its curtain of smooth mauve hair, and prayed she was smarter than the sister he had known before: smart enough to never love him back.

Of course, whatever concern he might have nurtured for the slim green girl was eradicated when her training began. Gamora was _fierce._ Cold in a way Anagi had never mastered, not as brutal as Korath, but infinitely more pragmatic and cruel. She learnt quickly, adapting to the cybernetics with a vigor not even Thanos had anticipated, and when he bestowed the name "favorite daughter" on her, it didn't matter that at that time there were no other daughters to compete with. Korath saw it for the snub it was.

* * *

Igrail was pathetic. Feeble. If he didn't take matters into his own hands, Korath would soon do it for him – if only to stop him shaming their father with his continued existence. But Korath had never been allowed to blossom into his place. He was a bridge, a filler, a branch stretching between stronger trunks: Igrail as he had first been, and his new little sister, who Thanos named _favorite_.

That day, as they trained, Korath grabbed Gamora over the new metal implant in her wrist, digging thumbs into the stretched and raw skin, trying to make her scream. Gamora did so – but only briefly. Then she bent further into his grip. It put him – who had been expecting her to yank away – fatally off balance, and when she drove her knee into his groin, he buckled.

"I am Thanos's favorite daughter," she spat, as the Other clapped somberly in the background and, a thousand meters below, Igrail took his final breath and jumped. "You think _you_ can beat _me?_ "

At that close range, her pupils were massive, swallowing the iris entirely. Korath squinted into them as he curled over his new hurt, searching for something, anything, that could be construed as _weakness._ He found only hatred. Gamora had taken his wish to heart – she felt nothing for him but glacial disdain. A good person would have been grateful. It meant she wasn't in danger, that she would never fall prey to Thanos's jealous wrath. But Korath, who had had goodness scraped from his marrow and replaced with hot and selfish steel, felt the glimmers of affection that'd germinated when he first helped dress her thin body in Anagi's outfit, wink abruptly out.

"Sister," he growled. His hands, folded protectively across his crotch – he'd have to see about getting implants there as well; couldn't have pain distract him on the battlefield when the time came for him to rend the galaxy in Thanos's name – tightened into fists. "You will pay for that!"

Gamora smirked, but ducked his punch only by a fraction. Korath roared and span and kicked her in the belly, slamming her through the nearest rock formation. Jagged fragments splintered around them, a firework in slow motion, before the strange energy that kept Thanos's fortress a beat out of sync with the rest of the galaxy drew those shards back into a solid construction once more. Korath laughed, wild and gleeful. He kept laughing, until Gamora somersaulted over the boulder, green blood streaming from between bared teeth, and the fight began anew.

* * *

For years after that, there were two. Then Nebula was dragged up the slimy black steps, screaming her little blue lungs out, and suddenly there were three again.

This time it was Gamora's turn to beat their new sibling to silence. Korath kept watch from a shadowed geological bower, the twisting monoliths and asteroids that comprised Thanos's exploded diagram of a palace shielding him from his sister's clever gaze. Or rather, his _sisters'._ Because where Gamora was coldly fierce, Nebula was fiery, and spent her first years risking evisceration by generating several curses revolving round Thanos's name, the inventiveness of which was the only thing which saved her. Thanos laughed and declared her amusing. Nebula screamed and postured, and Thanos gestured for Gamora and Korath to shut her up with a single revolution of a bejewelled purple wrist.

They did so. And, Korath noted, he did so with considerably more pleasure than Gamora.

"What's wrong, sister," he growled as he yanked Nebula's head back by the jellyfish-like fronds of her thick blue hair. "Getting sentimental?"

Gamora snorted. Trusting Korath to keep the wriggling girl imprisoned, she pinched Nebula's mouth and nose shut until she was lolling limp and hypoxic. "As if," she said. But when Korath dropped Nebula, Gamora caught her before she could fold onto the floor.

Korath stepped back, snorting. "Careful, Thanos's favorite." He nudged Nebula's limp calf with his boot. "Someone might think you care."

"Only as much as you did," came the even reply. Gamora hooped Nebula's arm over her shoulders, pausing for a moment to tug on the fat blue dreads. Her gaze was calculating, and Korath was unsurprised when the next time he saw the sisters, their heads were bowed together, Nebula's smooth blue skull a contrast to Gamora's red locks.

* * *

Korath would've taken it as an insult, had Gamora shaved his head and left her own thickly coated, although he had substituted his hair for a thick skull plate a decade ago. Nebula seemed to see it as a declaration of concern in a galaxy where such things were a luxury rarely found. But where Gamora had pushed Korath away as soon as she realized how dangerous it was to love a brother while under Thanos's guardianship, Nebula clung to her sister, pattering after her, copying all of her moves and practicing them again and again, until they flowed smooth as the planetary orbits.

Dithering at the edges of their fighting ring, Korath watched their swords swing and clash. He wondered whether he wanted Gamora to snap at Nebula, to hurt her so badly that she wouldn't scramble eagerly up for more, robotic limbs snapping back into place; or if not that, whether he wanted them both to fall victim of their own sentiments. Then, at long last, _he_ would be Thanos's favorite.

But blunt though he might be, Korath wasn't stupid. He knew that such patronage would only last as long as it took for Thanos to find a new child. Then Korath – big, sturdy Korath, who was kept around partly because he executed any who disrespected his father with extreme prejudice, mostly because he refused to take Igrail's way out – would be pushed onto the backburner once again.

It was somehow a relief, when his first prediction came true.

* * *

Korath woke to the sound of Nebula's screams.

He stretched luxuriously, rolling across the flat stiff boulder he had commandeered for his bed, and let the sweet dawn music wash over him. Then rolled onto his stomach, languorous and slow as a breaching whale, and rose to his feet. From his high vantage, he could see the training arena, crowned by Thanos's bleak column of a throne. And in it, at the center of that obsidian plaza, Nebula knelt like a core in a wart while Gamora pranced back and forth before her, breathing heavily, and stained to the elbows with her sister's blood.

At first he thought Nebula's shrieking was incomprehensible, a banshee-language of agony. But as he yawned and scratched his belly, nails scraping the edge of a new implant that boosted and slowed his metabolic rates at his command, he cocked his head and focused his hearing, and began to pick out the occasional word.

"Ha – I hate – I hate – I – I – you – I – _I hate you!_ "

Sobs were an ugly leitmotif, breaking the refrain. But now Korath knew what he was looking for, the words could not be mistaken.

"I hate you," Nebula wailed as she dragged trembling fingers over her gouged eyesockets, feeling out the scarred tear ducts, the twisted remains of the optic nerve. "I hate you, I hate you, I hate you."

Thanos laughed. " _Wonderful._ Gamora, finish it."

There was something stilted in the motions – as if Gamora was a puppet dancing on strings, not a daughter of Thanos reveling in bloodshed. Still, _finish it_ was Thanos's order. And _finish it_ Gamora did. She punched Nebula to the floor, caving her skull at the back, a wound it would take any of them at least a day to fully recover from. Then stood, bowed, and took her leave.

Korath watched her walk away from the twitching thirteen-year-old. He watched her wipe blood from her sword onto the algae-blanketed rocks. And he watched as she passed the curve of the staircase, out of sight of father and sister alike. Then, and only then, did Gamora let herself feel.

Her shoulders hunched. Her head fell forwards. Long red hair kissed her blue-stained forearms as she rubbed them across her face. Korath strained until he got flashing pop-ups from his aural modifications, but he managed to catch the words: a faint whisper whipped away by the solar winds.

"I'm sorry, sister."

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 **This fic is a gift for the wonderful Marvel-Tolkein Fangirl, who's been supporting me on my current multi-chapter 'How To Hug A Ravager'. If you haven't already checked that out, I'd be grateful if you gave it a look.**

 **Please review!**


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